


and the cicadas sang

by kangeiko



Category: Alias
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: fanfic100, Gen, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-02-20
Updated: 2006-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 14:53:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sloane attends a funeral.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and the cicadas sang

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: many, many thanks to my kind beta readers for words of encouragement and of stern grammar. *g* This piece is more mood than anything else, and I suspect that it ~~steals~~ borrows heavily from quite a few of my fave books. Erm. It's an homage, right?
> 
> fanfic100 Jack Bristow and Arvin Sloane #37 - Sound. My table is [here](http://kangeiko.livejournal.com/113677.html).

It was stifling twilight and the cicadas were just starting their song when Arvin Sloane put on black cotton gloves and laid his entire family in the ground. When it was over – or, rather, when the coffins were neatly laid out side by side – he stood next to the empty graves and wondered if there would be space for him in this cemetery, with only ravens and a lone preacher for company.

Overly-dramatic, he thought. It was self-indulgent (not like him at all) to sit here and think of them, as if they were live people locked in those neat boxes, and not – not. His memory of dead things failed him and his imagination would not yield.

He did not push it any farther.

Sloane started slightly as his peripheral vision registered movement; Sydney shifted in her seat. After a moment, he sat down by her side and stripped off the gloves, matted and dirty with grave soil. He tossed them underneath his seat and promptly forgot about them. They are dirty, he told himself, and he has plenty of gloves. He did not need them as some sort of gruesome memento mori.

Overly-dramatic, he thought. Self-indulgent.

(Not like him at all.)

He almost did not see Sydney's quick, darting fingers as they dove across his thigh and captured his bare hand. He hesitated for the barest fraction of a second before he moved to pull away, and by that point her fingers were entwined with his and there was no choice at all. Her skin was cold and clammy, despite the heat; he willed himself not to flinch away.

She closed both her hands over Sloane's left hand, rubbing her thumbs over the faint scarring across one finger. "I didn't think you scarred," she murmured quietly, apropos of nothing.

The preacher was saying – something; he could barely be heard above the low hum of the cicadas as they circled warily.

It is high summer and Arvin Sloane has just laid his entire family in the ground.

"Not because I thought you were particularly strong, you know," Sydney went on. She grimaced, though in the dim light Sloane could barely make it out. "Well," she amended, the single word a new note, "maybe at first. When Emily was ill – when my dad was away – back when I didn't know you. Maybe I thought you were too strong to scar. Maybe I hoped you were."

The hiss of the hemipteran song around him thrummed through Sloane's bones, awakening phantom aches and shooting pains. This isn't like me, he thought. "My dear…"

"Later – once I found out what you are – then I thought that you _couldn't_ scar." Sydney said, her voice firmer, cutting through the inchoate interruption with no difficulty. "That maybe you weren't human enough. That you could cut out your entire heart and it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter at all." Her long fingers still played between the hollows of Sloane's hand, as if memorising it through touch. "Maybe it had already happened, back when you weren't looking."

This isn't – And he tried to pull his hand away.

Sydney did not let go. "But that wasn't true, was it?" She looked down at their joined hands and beyond, at the twin coffins slowly lowered into the ground; satin and rosewood and cold flesh. "I thought I had you all figured out," she whispered.

"Let go, Sydney," he said eventually, and his voice was calm and level. "Let go of my hand."

After a long moment, she looked down, a faint trace of surprise on her face, as if she had been unaware how tightly she had been clutching at him. She prised her fingers away from his, clenching them across her swelling belly. "I thought I had you figured out," she said again, and it came out plaintive.

Sloane said nothing at all as he stood up and walked back to the empty grave. The preacher had been speaking and stopped, startled, but Sloane did not care. His hands bare, he reached out to scoop up soil and throw it on Nadia's coffin; on Jack's.

There must have been something more than just dirt in each handful; it clattered across the polished wood with force and noise and horror. Earth alone – it didn't sound like that.

Like that.

It is high summer, and Arvin Sloane has just placed his entire family beneath the earth. By his side, Sydney Bristow is wearing black maternity wear, and her eyes are hollow.

The preacher was speaking, possibly trying to pick up his service again, but Sloane couldn't hear him. His hand inched back to rest between Sydney's cold palms. Self-indulgent, Sloane thought, and he did not care at all.

All around them, as the graveyard emptied, the heat thickened and the twilight deepened and the cicadas, the cicadas sang.

*

fin

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Burial Ground (The Rambaldi Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/68504) by [Selena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selena/pseuds/Selena)




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